“Interestingly, every state but one—Montana—has at least ‘something’ banned from disposal in its solid waste facilities—at a minimum lead acid batteries, as is the case in Arizona and Wyoming. And 22 states have at least one mandatory recycling requirement,” NERC says in a release announcing the update.

The most commonly banned materials are presented in the chart at left.

In addition, there are bottle bill laws in 10 states and Guam, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Vermont.

WasteExpo 2017: Beyond data collection

Recording data is one thing, but deriving meaningful information from it to provide direction is quite another. Speakers during a session titled Smart Cities with a Solid (Waste) Plan, during WasteExpo 2017 in New Orleans shared how their communities are doing just that.

Susan Fife-Ferris, director, solid waste planning and program management, at Seattle Public Utlities, shared what the city of 700,000 people is doing with its data. She said data doesn’t just come from one source; it is collected by contractors, collectors, processors and an assortment of entities.

Within Seattle, private recyclers, composters and transfer stations operate. The city has two transfer stations, including one new one.

The city conducts research and studies and uses focus groups and stakeholders in its data gathering.

One of the struggles Fife-Ferris said Seattle faces is that many people live in the suburbs and come into Seattle for work as well as many people live in Seattle and go to the suburbs to work at places such as Microsoft. This creates a difficulty with consistency across the region, she said.

The city has 155,000 residential carts, 4,000 residential dumpsters and 6,000 commercial dumpsters. Recyclables and organics are banned from the dumpsters. Garbage collected from the city is long hauled to Arlington, Oregon, by rail about 320 miles away.

“We only pay for what we ship,” Fife-Ferris said. “The less we ship the less we have to pay so huge economic benefit by not having to ship it.”

She defined a “smart city” as one where you “gather data and you use that data to make decisions and drive your policies.”

This rationalization seems to work on residents. Only 2 percent have a 96-gallon container for their trash. Most have smaller containers. Enforcement of correct recycling is another component of the program. Residents who don’t recycle correctly are given an “Ooops!” tag on their bin to help correct the behavior.

“Education and outreach are of huge importance,” Fife-Ferris emphasized. She added that disposal bans also drive programs.

“There is a difference between data collection and performance metrics,” she said. “You can learn a lot by mining that data for information.”

Phil Bresee, chief of the environmental management office for the Arlington County, Virginia, Solid Waste Bureau, is unique in that almost as many people work in Arlington as live there. He said it also is the smallest county in the country at 26 square miles. Its proximity to the District of Columbia, which it was part of until the 1800s, gives it a highly educated, affluent population. It also has a high ratio of multifamily to single family homes. About three-fifths of the population live in multifamily dwellings, which has added challenges since the city does not handle the multifamily collection, said Bresee; it only regulates it.

The county has to rely on regulations to ensure recycling in multifamily dwellings, he said. A recent code change in 2015 forced closer inspection of commercial and multifamily properties which required inspection of individual tenants. The number of audits increased from 1,400 to 4,000. “The inspection didn’t just tell them if they were in compliance or not, but provided key takeaways.”

The county realized only 39 percent of tenants were in compliance with the regulations. The most common deficiencies, he said, were not enough bins and employee education and outreach.

The county of Arlington does quarterly waste audits of its residential waste streams. During these audits, the county noticed its diversion hovered at around 48.8 percent over the last 10 years. While that number remained consistent, the amount of municipal solid waste generated has declined by 34 percent.

The residential waste stream is about 60,000 tons per year. It also began collecting yard trimmings year round instead of seasonally, which added about 200 tons more yard trimmings to the stream per year. The county switched from producing paper copies of its solid waste and recycling plan to a cloud-based system called Re-TRAC.

“We are pretty data driven in Arlington,” said Bresee. “We use all of our data to inform stakeholders.” He said the county surveys its residents and receives about 1,000 surveys per month providing real data to be able to “mine and make program adjustments as we need to.”

Jim McKay, general manager, solid waste management services, city of Toronto, said, though the two aforementioned areas are different in size from each other and Toronto, many of the challenges are similar.

Toronto has a population of 3 million and it is made up of about 50/50 multi- and single-family homes. Commercial and industrial recycling are managed through the private sector. Before recycling diversion was measured by weight, but that does not give an accurate picture, according to McKay. “We are looking at changing how we measure diversion,” said McKay. “We won’t measure it by weight anymore. We are handling more material that weighs less. We are looking at a different set of metrics.”

Toronto has a three-cart program and 1.3 million carts are in use. It has transfers stations and drop-off locations, which McKay said don’t make sense anymore because fewer people are driving and more are relying on public transportation.

Toronto is paying to landfill materials so it wasn’t to put as little in the landfill as possible. It is also managing and monitoring about 160 closed landfills. “We are paying $12 million a year just to maintain those sites,” said McKay.

Canada operates a little bit differently than the U.S. because it has extended producer responsibility, where the manufacturers and distributers are responsible for a portion of the costs of recycling. It provides an extra revenue stream to the city.

The city has a curbside green bin and does biweekly garbage pickups. The list of organics the city accepts is quite extensive because of the flexibility of the two anaerobic digestion systems it has. “When you switch to biweeky pickups it is that much more incentive to divert more material,” he said.

The biggest change coming down the pipe for Canada is in provincial policy. Over the next several years EPR will go from paying 50 percent of the cost of recycling to 100 percent of the cost. The consumer goods companies have agreed to this plan as long as they can take control of the recycling system. It will be run by an organization made up of companies like Proctor & Gamble and Coca-Cola.

McKay said Toronto has an aspirational goal of zero waste. “We are trying to shift away from zero-waste and more toward a circular economy concept,” he said.

The city is also moving to mobile depots for recycling and bringing services to a high rise complex, for example. Textile recycling is another area the city is looking at as with its robust organics recycling program, textiles are a larger part of the waste stream.

One of the challenges of Toronto is its urban density and it is looking at a “more condensed solution than all these bins,” said McKay.

It also wants to reap the benefits of the two digesters that’s gas is being flared currently in what McKay called an “unbelievable waste of a resource.”

WasteExpo 2017 was May 8-11 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans.

ISRI2017: Plastic's environmental impact

Plastic is being used in a growing number of products and packages for reasons that may not be obvious to consumers.

Despite plastic being used in a growing number of product and packaging applications because of the environmental benefits it offers, its recycling rate has not kept up with that pace. However, the material’s environmental benefits may not be obvious to consumers, according to Patty Moore, president of Sustainable Materials Management of California and executive director of Plastic Recycling Corp. of California, Sonoma, California. Moore addressed attendees of the ISRI2017 session The New Energy Boom and how it Impacts Profitability of Plastics Recycling.

Moore addressed the concept of sustainable materials management, explaining that it was about “impact, not attributes,” such as containing recycled content, being compostable or being organic.

While recycled content can resonate with consumers, Moore said recycled-content products can have a greater impact on the environment than products made with virgin material. She cited molded fiber, which is used instead of plastic air cushions in some packaging applications. Moore said molded fiber takes a lot of energy to make largely because of the drying process, resulting in a greater environmental impact than air cushions. “It’s important to understand the impacts.”

Moore noted that substituting alternative materials for plastics in some consumer products and packaging applications can lead to four times the environmental costs of using “business as usual plastics.” Using “more sustainable plastic” reduces the delta in environmental costs even more.

She said a paper coffee cup with a cardboard sleeve has more of an environmental impact than an expanded polystyrene cup. “I want people to think a little bit more differently about why plastics use is increasing,” Moore said.

When it comes to postconsumer plastics that are recovered for recycling, she said, “quality sells," adding that quality helps to ensure more consistent sales at better prices.

Moore said U.S. exports of recovered plastics have been flat. She predicted a slight drop in export sales going forward. “The future is going to be domestic.”

The data Moore presented indicated an upward trend in U.S. consumption of postconsumer recycled plastics, with that figure growing from slightly less than 2,000 million pounds in 2009 to roughly 3,600 million pounds in 2015. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) make up the majority of this material, followed by nonbottle rigids and film.

She said the U.S. has more conversion capacity than material available for processing. “There is more than enough capacity for PET bottles generated in the U.S.”

Bale yield is an ongoing problem that convertors must contend with, Moore said, noting that it can range from 60 percent to the mid-70s.

PET thermoforms are under pressure to use more recycled content, she said. But when it comes to recycling this material, not all haulers, material recovery facilities (MRFs) or recyclers want them.

Sales of HDPE bottles have been static in the U.S. As the value of this material has declined, so has the growth in collection, she said. While the U.S. has reclamation capacity for segregated HDPE, a lack of separation capacity is leading less reclamation.

WasteExpo 2017: Using big data to create a more efficient industry

A key term heard throughout WasteExpo, which took place from May 8-11, 2017, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, was “big data.” Big data, according to several session speakers throughout the show, can be used to increase efficiencies in different industry sectors.

In the session Big Data & Smart Waste, which took place May 8, speakers Amity Lumper, Don Ross, Jason Gates and Scott Lukach discussed how data collection is affecting customer service and outreach and route optimization and how to pin down the most relevant sets of data.

According to Don Ross, director of operations at Kessler Consulting Inc., Tampa, Florida, while data gathering for the waste industry is important, big data goes from a terabyte to many petabytes in size—an amount the waste industry may not need or even have.

Because the public sector, private sector and haulers communicate with similar or the same customers throughout their areas, the data sets needed to create a more efficient business can be smaller. Rather than gathering every piece of data from a customer, he said, “you need to figure out what is essential and valuable to your operations.”

Data can be used for service verification, fleet and telematics, route optimization, bin volume, behavior tracking and in “smart cities,” or urban areas that use data, information and communication technology and the internet of things to manage its assets. The data come from different technologies made for different purposes, such as cameras, radio frequency identification tools (RFID) and in-cab devices.

For Amity Lumper, co-president of recycling and materials management with Seattle-based Cascadia Consulting Group, and the city of Seattle, gathering data on the practices and behaviors of individual houses allowed the Seattle sanitation department to personalize each customer’s experience.

Customers receive feedback on waste and recycling rates and can receive a certain time when a truck will pick up their curbside containers, and the city knows where certain education efforts need to be targeted.

Jason Gates, co-founder of San Francisco-based Compology, used data to create a customer outreach tool that allows customers to order service or make an appointment for cart maintenance through their mobile devices. Optics-based sensors manufactured by Compology are designed to monitor location, fullness and movement of the container; use 24/7 cloud-based data hosting and GPS-enabled container tracking; and provide in-browser tools to manage assets, schedule container hauls, digitally dispatch drivers to their locations and track performance metrics.

According to Scott Lukach, vice president of environmental services at Rehrig Pacific Co. in Los Angeles, gathering data and using that information in certain applications, such as the aforementioned, is only the beginning for the waste industry. In general, data are changing the way the world lives—from how objects are purchased to how people communicate.

“Behaviors are changing,” he said during the session. “And we need to change with it as an industry.”

Cloud computing is pushing the “clunky” technology of old off to the wayside and providing more space to hold more information but take up less room. Scanners used by haulers didn’t communicate well and were unreliable. With RFID tagging on containers, machine-to-machine communication allows for a more reliable set of data, he said.

This, Lukach said, lets waste companies create marketing campaigns with more focus, such as Lumper’s targeted education efforts, and a closer relationship with its customers through mobile apps.

ISRI2017: Recycled plastics make inroads in auto applications

While it’s not necessarily an easy road to travel, recycled plastics increasingly are being used in automotive applications, according to sessions at ISRI2017, the annual convention of the Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), which was April 22-27 in New Orleans.

Bill Schreiber, who retired from Tucker, Georgia-based Lehigh Technologies March 1, 2017, spoke about the process for recycling thermoplastic olefin (TPO) bumpers. He filled in for Ron Whaley, CEO of Waverly, Ohio-based Geo-Tech Polymers, who was unable to speak because of an illness in his family.

Lehigh produces an ultrafine recycled rubber powder that is used as a functional filler in a range of plastic compounds. The company works with plastics recycler and compounder ACI Plastics, headquartered in Flint, Michigan, which recycles TPO bumpers and other automotive components.

In an email dated May 15, 2017, ACI President Scott Melton says the company uses its own technology to remove paint from incoming bumpers prior to recycling. The company has six tanks with a total paint-removal capacity of 9 million tons annually, which represents approximately 20 percent of its overall business.*

All metals clips and non-TPO components must be removed prior to downsizing the bumpers. Schreiber said the final size of the ground TPO material is critical, as it must be small enough for the chemical paint-removal process to work but not so small that a too many fines are produced. ACI then compounds the ground material with a twin-screw extruder, which can help to remove paint contamination that the chemical process missed, he said.

On average, 20 percent to 25 percent recycled material is blended with virgin TPO, Schreiber said, adding that little degradation of the impact strength of the recycled TPO occurs.

Also speaking during the session on auto bumpers was Sue Kozora, director of advanced engineering, North America, at International Automotive Components (IAC), Southfield, Michigan, a company that provides interior parts made in part from postindustrial recycle content to all automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Kozora said bumpers are targeted for recycling because they are easy to remove from vehicles. She said recycled TPO used in this application should get kudos because bumpers are a safety product with “particular requirements” set by government.

To achieve optimal reuse of TPO and other plastics used in automotive applications, Kozora said regrind from the supplier should be screened initially to understand the effects of multiple heats and changes in the molecular weight and other material properties. The material also should be incorporated into molding trials.

She suggested planning for scrap disposition early in the design process, adding that if a part has a high scrap rate, it should be able to consume scrap or target another outlet that does. She also said it was important to design with the intent of using a common family of materials to reduce variability.

Kozora also spoke during a session on how the growth in natural gas production is affecting plastics recycling’s profitability. She said there are no shortcuts when it comes to using recycled plastics, which she likes to refer to as “experienced resins,” in automotive applications.

IAC consumes 53.3 million pounds of recycled resins, with the company’s internally generated scrap accounting for 17 million pounds of that figure. Ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) makes up 9.4 million pounds of the recycled plastics IAC uses, while polypropylene (PP) is the next largest recycled resin the company consumes at 5.5 million tons, followed by polycarbonate/acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (PC/ABS) at 5 million pounds.

While Kozora said recycled materials can conform to automotive industry standards and have been used for decades, she added that a stigma persists, a sentiment that was echoed by other speakers during ISRI2017. OEM specifications, expectations and targets vary widely for recycled plastics, and OEMs require the same level of multilot statistical data for recycled materials as they do for virgin plastics, Kozora said. OEMs might use the same specifications for virgin plastics or they may use specifications specific to recycled materials.

She added that OEMs “usually” expect recycled plastics to cost less than their virgin counterparts, even if they perform the same way. On average, she said, OEMs expect recycled plastics to be 10 percent to 50 percent less expensive than virgin plastics.

Kozora said recycled plastics likely won’t totally replace virgin plastics in automotive applications, adding that the materials must responsibly coexist. And while finding reliable, consistent supplies of some recycled plastics can be challenging, she noted that virgin materials are not necessarily worry-free, noting that her company has experienced a number of force majeure events affecting supply in her professional lifetime.

From an engineering standpoint, Kozora said it was important to design for recycling as well as for using recycled material.

Another ISRI2017 session dealt with getting recycled resins approved for use by the auto industry. Eric Connell, senior engineer for Toyota Motor Corp., who is based in Dexter, Michigan, said his company seeks to balance environmental performance with customer need when using recycled materials.

He provided information on Toyota’s attempt to use recycled PP in a hidden interior part. While he said “a lot of recycled material is available,” the company decided not to incorporate it into the part because it increased its mass by 7 percent. He said, “Black material had a higher density because of the additional carbon” used to color the material. Increasing mass is against Toyota policy, however, so the company did not pursue the use of recycled content in this application.

Connell said Toyota needs “lot-to-lot consistency” in the recycled plastics it uses. “Many recycled resin compounders cannot meet lot-to-lot variability targets.” He also said that the perception lingers that recycled materials are not suitable for use in safety parts. “Part of the problem with plastics is the perception that recycled material has inferior quality,” he said.

“Cost is also an issue. The delta is not enough to get people to take the plunge.”

Toyota does not have a separate specification for the recycled resins it uses, he said. If the company can find recycled plastics that meet its specs and master color requirements and that have the same properties for tooling compatibility from suppliers that can manage material variability from lot to lot and deliver strong and consistent supply, then recycled plastics can be used.

Sassan Tarahomi, director of R&D and process engineering at Mitsubishi Chemical Performance Polymers Inc., based in the Detroit area, agreed that the use of recycled resins in autos is governed by performance, cost and density issues.

He also suggested that mandates for the use of recycled plastic in cars are needed to push further progress in this area.

Tarahomi said OEMs and their Tier 1 suppliers must do a better job designing plastic parts for disassembly and avoiding using dissimilar materials in the same assemblies.

Derek Reed, senior resin sales executive for Padnos, Wyoming, Michigan, said using recycled plastics in automotive applications requires getting the support of molders, Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs, in particular securing buy-in from their engineering and purchasing departments.

He said OEMs are largely looking for cost savings when purchasing recycled resins rather than virgin plastics.

* This article originally misstated that ACI used Geo-Tech's paint-removal technology and underrepresented the number of paint-removal tanks and capacity ACI has while over-representing the percentage of the company's business TPO bumpers represent. ACI President Steve Melton says ACI developed and patented its paint removal technology in 1997.